[Gllug] free (very very old) kit

[William Palfreman]

On 21 Aug 2001, Jon Masters wrote:

> I've been using 486s for years without any problem although I do plan to
> use a pentium grade machine for my ADSL at home (USB required and all
> that -might go for an old PII since I can get one pretty cheapish).

You might have been using 486s for years, but that doesn't stop them being
a pain in the bum!

> > These will have real pci slots (so you can use nics that actaully
> work!)
> 
> 3c509s don't work? ...or did you mean to say something else?

I think my Etherlink III worked once, but but generally I have hardly ever
got ISA nics to work.  This is probably due to me first starting to play
with things like that after the dawn of PCI, else I would have had to
learn all the tweaks.

 
> > and come with 16Mb ram
> 
> but my 486s have 16MB of RAM (well, a couple have 16, one has 12 and
> another has 8).

[clunk clunk, clunk clunk clunk]
$

> > you can definitely attach a CDROM.
> 
> Why would I want that? I've got CDROM drives and DVDROM drives coming
> out of my ears...and more to the point, I have both samba and nfs
> working just fine for when installations are required (last few were
> done as net installs over dialup anyway).

I know.  Normally I would never use a CDROM to install on a machine that
even had one, but like I said, I could never get the nics working until
*after* the OS install...
 
> > Also modern cdroms are genereally too fast for old 486s, and cause the
> > install to fail.
> 
> One of the 486s does in fact have a CDROM drive, a 36X one - is that
> fast enough or did you want me to try it with a 50x one?

I have this pukka 4x speed CDROM from work that I am saving for such a
machine :-)

Seriously though, I used to get mine to work almost all the time @ 32
speed, less reliably @ 36 speed (this being for a full Linux install, and
not just a few little things), and useless on the 52 speed model.  After
that my 486 spent a very long time in my cupboard.
 
> > Anyway, you can't go wrong with P75s for low-end work, and they cost next
> > to nothing these days.
> 
> I'll bear it in mind but I still quite like old 486 DX2 66/100s.

Torvalds' was using one until '97  wasn't he?  I intend to keep using my
K6/2 for ages yet.

Regards,
Bill.


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